The Company
by Jerry Dysart
Summary: I have dreams that I'm the Doctor. This is one of the more clear ones I had. Standard taking down an evil threat on Earth story.


Another lovely Story. It should be noted that I have not watched the older Doctor Who shows and at the time of writing this I have just started into Season 4 of the reboot. I wasn't worried about keeping anything 'in character' since in my dreams I am not any specific Doctor, just one in general. I don't think I could get any more fan boy then dreaming that I am the Doctor...

The Company

I couldn't remember how the story started just that I was here, locked up in a futuristic looking prison cell on what was left of earth. I gathered up what I could remember, I'm alive, yes that much was obvious, I was also alone in my cell but that struck me as odd. I didn't know why but I felt that I was missing someone. Next, my name, I knew it but it wasn't what I told others, I'm The Doctor. Ah yeah that's right its Christmas! And here I am stuck alone in a cell on what must be Earth. But none of this felt right.

I peeked out of my cell, not from between bars but through an invisible wall. It should be 2011 and this technology should not be here, curious. More curious was the lack of guards, one lone robotic looking one stood at the far end of the room, one elongated hallway, probably filled with more cells like my own but I could only look so far before I started to smash my face into the invisible door. The robot was not like the cybermen nor had anything that gave it away as dalac. It looked like a standard drone, excellent..

What my captors had failed to do was search my pockets apparently confident in their memory wiping technology. A quick reach in produced my screw driver that did away with the wall in a flash of purple light. I stood still for a second to make sure no one saw what I had done then yelled at the guard.

"Hey you!" The thing didn't move, maybe it didn't have ears. Which would be weird for the massive amount of advanced technology that shouldn't be here. In any case I decided to casually stroll through the long hallway towards the robot. A quick flick of my screwdriver and I wouldn't have to worry about setting off any alarms, hopefully.

The cells I passed were full of people but none looked up, all of their faces dead and thoughtless, minds thoroughly wiped. I guess a low tech guard really would be all that's needed against prisoners who had no interest in escape or even understand the concept and probably didn't even know the word escape. I'd come back to help them out later, right now I had to focus on fixing whatever mess I was in now and finding my companion whoever that may be! My mind was still foggy on that subject but I was confident that once I saw this person It'd come rushing back to me.

And here I was a few feet behind the robot. It had no distinctive features up close either that may have given away its creator but the word "Sunbeam" was on its shoulder, weird. As I suspected the screwdriver made quick work with shorting out its circuits dropping it to the ground. Close up I still couldn't figure out where the thing had come from. The taste of the air around it suggested that it came from Earth and was made of Earth technology but that's impossible.

I left the robot and tried the door, it was unlocked but that never mattered. Through it was another long hallway with what seemed like hundreds of other doors identical to the one I had just stepped through. None of them had a viable way of telling them apart from one another. Walking a few paces north I decided to try a door to my right on a whim. The 'boss' was more then likely behind a much larger door more then likely at the end of this hallway, or at the top, or something else I had experienced before, but it never hurt to take a poke around.

This door was also unlocked, and on second inspection didn't have a way to lock it. Behind this one wasn't a room of cells but one filled with giant monitors set on walls that were snaked with cords and wires all hooked up to chairs that were sunk into the floor. Peering closer I could see more mindless people typing away at an array of keyboards, letters and numbers flying around on the screens at impossible speeds. Panning my sight more to the right I was almost startled by a well dressed man standing silently at a podium unphased by my apperance.

"Excuse me sir, but I seem to be lost." I moved closer to the podium to get a better look, the only light source in the room where the monitors casting a soft purple glow. The man's tie was also purple and I felt I would be seeing a lot of this color later.

"Yes you are." He spoke with no emotion but there was intelligence in his eyes. He hadn't been mind wiped like the rest.

"And you aren't going to do anything about this? I'd think that 'normal' people aren't something you see daily."

"Nope." More silence, it made me feel like I was the interrogator and he was the one who had wandered in.

"Sooooooo, no alarms, or telling your boss, or a battle, or guns, or a tea party? That's rather boring." I sighed dramatically.

"Look buddy, I don't care. I've seen plenty of people come in here and try to take down the company but it never works. It doesn't mater what I do." At the word company the rest of my memory came rushing back to me. It wasn't just any company it was The Company. They traveled planets like Earth setting up bases and mining the worlds dry to produce the next best thing to market to the rest of the universe. No one ever asked or cared where the things came from, it was a well hid secret but we had caught on a few days ago.

That's right we! Jake, my companion oh man I sure hope he hasn't become a mindless slave like the rest. That would be annoying to fix, fixable yes, but more effort then I had expected to use today. We had gotten in via tardis, ran around all willy nilly, and gotten caught by some guards, human guards. We had been dragged to the Executive. He had no formal name and had insisted to be refereed to as "Executive" before separating the two of us. I had been taken to a dark room where they had hooked me up to a machine and it went blurry from there. All the recollection happened in a blink of an eye and catching my breath I continued the conversation.

"But there are hundreds of you in here! Why not just restore everyone's minds and take your planet back?" I threw my hands up dramatically and strutted around the room to add to the drama. The man was not amused or motivated by my display.

"There is no way to do any of that. There is no reason to do any of that. There is no reason for this conversation." I just left the man at that and returned to a now more familiar corridor following a familiar path to the end of more familiarity. This was the spot where they had been caught and as if on cue two guards came out of a near by door, this time two robots. Both were just as unmarked as the last one but even knowing who the advisory was didn't answer why they were so bland. The Company was known for flashy and the robots were everything but that.

A few swipes of the sonic screwdriver took care of them, their shoulders had words on them as well but both different from each other and different from the first robot, "Seagate" and "Galaxy". I could feel the gears start to click in my head and I didn't like where this was going. In the far, dark places of my mind I kept locked away I could feel something nagging and tell me this wasn't going to end well. The rest of the short walk to the end of the corridor went by uneventful leaving me standing in front of a decently large door that was bound to have The Executive behind it.

Or I could be wrong! Behind the door might have been The Executive but he would have been lost in the biggest tangled mess of cords and monitors I had ever seen. It was like the last room I had been in but multiplied a hundred times and spread through a giant, hanger like room. I was able to navigate the chaos without being bothered despite the number of other people milling around. I was confronted a few times but only in a casual nod of the head. The same with the other room the only lighting was the purple glow of hundreds of screens but I guess it didn't need another light source at this grand scale. By sheer luck I spotted a partially covered door a few hundred paces in. I approached it with no problem and opened it with no problem, it was when I stepped foot inside that things went, unfavorably.

Inside the room was shockingly bare apart from a strange device that sat on a plain desk against the far wall. This device must have been important because the second I stepped inside all of the people outside turned in sync towards my direction and began chanting the same thing over and over again slowly advancing towards me.

"You can not stop him. You can not stop him." I dove towards the strange device that looked like a gun on closer inspection and had two switches on the top that said 'Advance' and 'Degenerate'. It was what I feared, an Electro Metallic Dimensional Mechanic Exceler-decelerator. The gun could advance any technology from anywhere in the universe and also set it back hundreds of years. I could have sworn the Time Lords had eradicated all of these across all spans of time but then again even we weren't perfect.

I made quick haste in leaving the room and dodging the oncoming wave of people. They were luckily unarmed but that didn't mean they weren't dangerous, The Executive was probably aware of me by now which was fine, because I had his EMDMED-er. Setting the thing to 'Degenerate' I started to shoot wildly at the monitors watching the fancy purple technology grow dismal black spots and revert to the standard tellys they were before. I struck the cords in hope of freeing as many people as I could, if it wasn't too late. I didn't stick around to see the results but the room had exploded into a nightmare.

"YOU CAN NOT STOP HIM!" I was still being chased and their message was being desperately yelled above the noise of decaying electrical equipment and the glorious sound of panic as people did start waking from their trance. I was sure I was keeping enough distance but in my arrogance I tripped up on some stray wire, the first line of howling wards caught up in no time moving to restrain me. I pocketed the gun as quick as I could before being scooped up roughly dragged into another door sunk into the wall.

The chanting had quit as soon as I was caught leaving a cold silence inside what was an elevator heading upwards. In seconds I would be face to face with The Executive and it was exciting. Here I was at a disadvantage, at his mercy in the iron grip of the wards about to face an unknown consequence, and I couldn't help but smile. The elevator made no noise but I could feel the hum of electricity in my feet, I was sure that while the inside was a standard grey color that somewhere the color purple was involved.

It didn't take long for us to reach our destination the doors opening to a much whiter and less cluttered room I had been in before. There was a small cluster of people set into the floor to the left side of the room hooked up to monitors but instead of a tangled web of wires this set up was organized and most importantly not purple.

The Executive sat an an elaborate desk elevated at the front of the room looking out of a large wall of windows into the city below. He finished writing, or pretending to, before he looked up feigning surprise at seeing me. That didn't last long as he stood and confidently strode down the steps of his risen thrown to greet me. His black hair was slicked back and his suit equally black and perfect, a white rose settled in his breast pocket.

"Congratulations Doctor I underestimated you. I suspected you weren't human and now I know, Time Lord." Great, a monologue that will involve talking about the end of my people. "How does it feel to be the last of your kind? I couldn't possibly imagine." and I clicked back out to figure out what I was going to do. Looking closer at the cluster of sunken chairs I saw Jake! I hid my excitement as I continued to pretend to care about what The Executive was saying. "... and now what am I going to do with you? Hook you up to my machines of course! I bet you've figured out by now what I'm doing here Doctor."

"It became obvious after I found your special 'gun'. What was the one thing The Company needed? You already had everything but here you found millions of people at your disposal as a massive processor. The human mind, so complicated and simple at the same time it didn't take much to tinker with did it? To fit your needs." The Executive took a few steps closer grinning like he had won getting face to face with me.

"It doesn't mater now that I have one of the most powerful brains in the universe in my hands." He hissed close to my face his breath minty perfect like the rest of him. "I've got the perfect spot for you right here in my own personal office but not before I take this back." He slipped a hand into the pocket with the gun in it but I had expected this and kicked it out of his hand and towards the other people. It landed a few feet from Jake but it didn't mater, I had hoped to wake him with it but my aim needed work. The Executive shook his injured hand then punched me in the face.

"Did you think that would work? Even if that had worked I would have been able to restrain him with ease. Now put him in the machine!" My captors dragged me towards an empty seat a few seats down from Jake, this was it. I might not be able to fight back now but I could always destroy The Company from the inside. My mind would not be totally lost in its systems, but I didn't know how long it would take and it seemed unfair to the rest of the world, I had failed them and now I was captured.

The chair responded to me as soon as I was sat down. Without command it began to tangle me to it pulling me in and connecting with my mind. I could feel everyone else that was hooked up, their fear, their despair, all the emotion that survived the mind wipe. No one knew why they felt this but it was human instinct that kicked in and knew that this wasn't how things were supposed to be.

As I slipped away into the machine there was quick movement out of the corner of my eye as someone picked up the fallen gun and shouted. It was Jake, somehow he had escaped the machine's hold on his mind, or maybe it was never there. In my excitement I managed to hold off the machine's advances as I watched Jake hold the gun towards The Executive.

"Bang" He didn't know what the gun did but took a wild chance and shot it at The Executive caught off guard by the whole situation. No one had ever thought to shoot the thing at organic mater and I was glad I had left the thing set on 'Degenerate' because something did happen. The blood stream, no mater what species, contained some sort of metal and I was willing to bet The Executive was close enough to human to have iron in his that reached to the 'Electro Metallic' part of the gun in a gruesome explosion of flesh and shreds of black cloth.

Jake made quick work with freeing me handing off the gun. He looked a little shaken by the ordeal but relieved that I had found him. I wasted no time in destroying the set up in the office dashing up to the desk. Inlaid on the top was a screen that probably controlled the facility, a quick scan with the screwdriver proved this. Thinking quick I hooked up the gun to the desk and set it to fry everything in the building reverting it to technology appropriate for this time period.

"We might want to get out of here!" I smiled and took Jakes hand bounding down the stairs and towards the elevator. I had given us enough time to get back to the lower levels and into the Tardis, I hope. I had no clue what would happen if my ship took a blast from the EMDMED-er and I didn't plan on finding out. The lower level was a frantic mess like I had left it but this time it looked like most everyone was free. The office set up must have been the core of the operation and destroying that sent a wave down the line knocking everything else out.

Awesome, setting the gun to do a massive shock wave probably wasn't necessary but I guess better safe then sorry. Looking over I could tell Jake was as excited over an over dramatic count down race to the Tardis as I was. It was why I had picked him as my companion, no whining and the same sick sense of adventure I had. Leaving the large room behind us we had gotten half way through the long corridor before we ran into the podium man who looked shaken and wandered aimlessly. Catching sight of me he clicked back into reality.

"You are a dangerous man and I hope to never see you again." It isn't often that I get yelled at for saving the world and it still throws me off.

"That's what you get for messing with the Doctor!" Jake had taken away the opportunity of yelling that at The Executive but at least I was able to squeeze it in somewhere. The Tardis wasn't far as we bounded over the bodies of fallen, stalled, and otherwise disabled robotic guards.

"How much... time do we... have?" Jake was breathing heavy but kept up with my fast pace.

"I don't know!" I laughed as we closed in the Tardis, it was at the end of the corridor and its blue frame was visible. We probably had just enough time left to get in and warp out before the shock wave and the excitement moved our feet faster.

The doors now in sight.

Then the keyhole

Then the inside

We were safe maybe as our hearts raced hitting anything that would get us out of here. The pulsing of the Tardis picked up its pace as it flung us far away from our current time and space into the unknown. Just how we like it.


End file.
